1953年，勒-柯布西耶给智利建筑师写了一封信，这封信是通过Emilio Duhart发出的，Emilio Duhart是一位非常重要的智利建筑师，他当时正在印度为勒-柯布西耶绘制建筑。在这封信中，他强调了在发展设计过程中照顾到人的必要性。他说：”在那一刻，学术思想被抛在脑后，最小的测量、较短的距离或最小的建筑空间，变得像沙漠中的一杯水一样珍贵”。
由于我在建筑学院，我面对的是一些小项目，如小木屋、度假屋等。但它们不仅仅是面积小，而且预算也小。因此，我的第一个专业挑战是如何用少量的钱做好设计。后来的大问题是，我不断接到这样的任务，因为在某种程度上，我擅长做 “低成本的设计”。

In 1953 Le Corbusier wrote a letter to the Chilean Architects, and was sent through Emilio Duhart, a very important Chilean Architect that was drawing for him the buildings that he was doing in that moment in India. In this letter he emphasize the need on taking care of people while developing a design process. He said that “in that moment academic ideas where left behind, and the smallest measurements, the shorter distances or the smallest built spaces, become precious as a glass of water in the desert”.
Since I was in the School of Architecture, I faced little projects, like cabins, vacation homes, etc. But they they were not just small in terms of area, they had also a small budget. So my first professional challenges where to manage doing good design with a few money. The big problem afterwards was that I kept on receiving this kind of assignments, because in some way or the other, I had specialized on doing ‘low cost design’.

所以我开始制定不同的策略来达到良好设计的目标。我去调查预制建筑，思考以更多的控制、更快、更便宜的方式建造的技术可能性。我有一些有趣的经验，比如我在智利圣多明各的SIP板房。但是预制技术需要一些与商业市场相关的工业流程，如果你想降低建筑成本，这些流程是有限制的。因此，后来我尝试着在 “低技术 “设计上下功夫。在智利这样的国家，你通常会发现不稳定的背景下，建筑物会上升。所以很容易接触到当地不稳定的技术和劳动力。而这种不稳定性与设计有很大的关系，即用较少的时间、当地的材料和很少的技术知识来解决建筑问题的能力。这就是我在智利金特罗的 “Hostal Ritoque “中使用的策略。

So I started developing different strategies for reaching this goal of good design. I went on survey for prefabricated architecture, thinking of the technical possibilities of building with more control, faster, and cheaper. And I had some interesting experiences as my SIP Panel House in Santo Domingo, Chile. But prefabrication techniques require some industrial processes, related to commercial markets, that have a limit if you want to go down on the building cost. So then I tried working on ‘low tech’ design. In a country like Chile, you usually find precarious contexts were buildings rise. So is easy then to get in touch with local precarious techniques and workforce. And this precariousness is very well related to design in terms of the capacity of solving architecture problems with less time, local materials and little technological knowledge. This was the strategy that I used in my ‘Hostal Ritoque” in Quintero, Chile.

这个聚碳酸酯小屋是一个出租的小房子，就在Guanaqueros村海岸的另一个更大的房子旁边，供人过节。屋主以出租这两座房子为生，为那些留在该国主要海滩度假区之外的人服务。这是一个小规模的个人企业，提供一个住宿和享受海滩的地方，所以在一开始，建造的预算非常紧张，只有365美元/平方米。所以在这种情况下，我再次尝试用低技术设计，只和一个木匠合作，用他知道的技术，在设计过程的开始就吸收所有这些条件。

This Polycarbonate Cabin is a small house for rent, just beside another bigger house for holydays in the coast of Guanaqueros village. The owner lives on renting this two houses for people that are left outside the main beach resorts of the country. It’s a small scale personal enterprise to offer a place to stay and enjoy the beach, so in the beginning there was a very tight budget to build, just U$365 / sqm. So in this case I tried again working with low tech design, working with just one carpenter, with the techniques he knew, assimilating all this conditions in the beginning of the design process.

但是还有一个问题。这个地方已经有一个已经建成的房子，甚至还有一个预先存在的9平方米的房间。因此，建造第二座度假屋的面积也很紧张，这意味着缺乏阳光。这就是为什么我使用了两个设计操作，旨在解决这个问题。第一个是将两个房间的墙壁错位，在原有的房间内创造一个光的天井。第二项操作是用聚碳酸酯建造分隔两个房子的大墙，使其形成一个90厘米宽的走廊。通过这两项操作，我们可以让房子与场地有一个非常紧密的关系，并为这个小屋提供大量的阳光。

But there was another problem. The site had already a built house, and even a pre-existing room beside of 9 sqm. So there was a tight area also to build this second holiday house, and that meant lack of sunlight. That’s why I used two design operations aiming to solve this problem. The first was mismatching the walls of both rooms to create a light patio within the pre-existing room. And the second operation was to build with polycarbonate, the large wall that separate both house were it develops an 90 cm wide corridor. With this two operations we could give the house a very tight relation with the site, and a lot of sunlight for this Cabin.

这个聚碳酸酯小屋被命名为 “聚碳酸酯小屋”，是因为它在太阳落山的一面有一个长长的聚碳酸酯墙。这面白墙可以反射光线，是半透明的。如前所述，这个小木屋位于一个已经有房子的地方。由于彼此距离很近，这面聚碳酸酯墙既能照亮小屋的内部，也能照亮房屋之间的走道。结构系统是用标准的原松木板完成的。所有的房子都是由一个工匠在两个月内完成的。

This polycarbonate cabin is named like that because it has a long polycarbonate wall on the setting sun side. This white wall can reflect light and be translucent. As was told before, this little cabin is located in a site that has already a house. Being so close to each other, this polycarbonate wall gives light both the inside of the cabin, and the walkway between the houses. The structural system is done with standard boards of raw pine wood. All the house was built just by one craftsmen within 2 months.

Architects: Alejandro Soffia
Area: 30 m²
Year: 2016
Photographs: Juan Dúran Sierralta
Budget:U$365 / sqm2
Collaborator:Francesco Borghi
City:Guanaqueros
Country:Chile